


Trying

by juniper_and_lamplight



Series: Close Reading [4]
Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Books, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Violence, Minor misuse of a beloved children's book series, Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently), Reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-09-30 09:04:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20444594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniper_and_lamplight/pseuds/juniper_and_lamplight
Summary: “I read what I need to read. Just like I eat food when it comes to me, and find cars that start when they’re supposed to, and drive to wherever I gotta go.”





	Trying

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to flightinflame for suggesting that reading works differently for people with holistic abilities.

_ **Now** _

The lights flicker out, one by one, and the darkness races towards her. 

She hears the heavy _thunk _of locks echoing through the murky expanse, and she wonders why they bother. Locks don’t work on her. Not if she’s meant to leave. Of course, this time she doesn’t _want _to leave. At least not yet. Not alone.

It’s so quiet in here now that Ken and Mr. Priest are gone. When she was in Blackwing before, she hardly ever saw any of the others, the ones like her, but she’d been able to hear them—sounds, voices. Sometimes screams. There’s none of that now. Now, all she can hear is the quiet beat of her own blood, and a faint ringing in her ears from the extinguished fluorescent lights. She’d wanted an escape from the noise of the world, the noise in her _head_, but she hadn’t expected this much nothing.

She looks around the room, trying to get a better idea of her surroundings, but there’s not much to see. Everything in Blackwing is blank and boring and silent. Even the clothes they gave her are bland. At least her last prison shirt—the one ruined by the splotches of blood and shards of chainsawed armor—had letters and numbers on it; this dumb one-piece thingy only has a symbol. _Her _symbol, one that can’t be decoded or read, because it doesn’t mean anything except that she’s nameless here; she’s property. It might not be better than being a puppet, but at least it’s different. 

It’s exhausting just to think of going back out there, back to being a piranha on the stream of creation. Still, she knows she can’t stay here forever. Especially not with the universe tickling her trigger finger every time Ken visits. She knows now that the universe never relents, and that it won’t be ignored, but maybe this time is like with Dirk Gently—she feels like she’s supposed to kill Ken, but she’s actually supposed to protect him. Protect him from Blackwing. From himself. If she can just convince Ken to leave with her, to go back to the way they were, before.... It’s a long shot, and yanking on her own puppet strings hasn’t worked out too good so far. But if Panto can get a happy ever after, maybe she and Ken can find out how their story ends, too. The world would be _bearable, _at least, with Ken by her side. She came here for him, after all. She can’t leave without him. She _has _to try. 

Her tangled curls muffle the thump of her head as she drops it to the table.

She _hates _trying.

* * *

_ **Then** _

“You don’t even want to try it?” 

Ken held out a forkful of something so yellow and drippy that Bart had to laugh. “Why would I wanna eat something that looks like snot?”

Ken put the fork in his own mouth, chewed and swallowed before speaking again. “Nope, I’m not going to let you ruin hollandaise. C’mon, you pick something. It’ll help you get the shampoo taste out of your mouth.” He handed her a slim binder with a smooth brown cover.

“What, am I ‘sposed to eat this?” The pages inside were covered in tiny letters and numbers that swam in front of her eyes. 

“No, it’s—it’s a room service menu, you just pick the food you want to eat and they’ll bring it, like they brought the eggs benedict.”

She shrugged. “I don’t care. You pick again. But not snot this time.” She wouldn’t look at him, but she could feel him looking at her. 

“Bart...can you read?”

She turned her head back to see his serious face—he could do so many faces besides surprised and scared, more faces than she even knew existed, and she wanted to see them all. “Course I can read, I’m not a dummy.” 

“Okay, so you can read, but you can’t read this menu. Or the one in the Chinese restaurant—”

“I told you I never been to China!”

“—or the shampoo label, or the ‘no parking’ sign—” 

“I read what I need to read. Just like I eat food when it comes to me, and find cars that start when they’re supposed to, and drive to wherever I gotta go.”

“So, you can only read when you _need _to read?”

“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know.” She dropped the menu onto the giant fluffy blanket covering the bed. Who needed a blanket that big and fluffy for sleeping indoors?

Ken just kept talking. He was doing his interested face now. “Okay, but what about, well, everything else? Things that you don’t strictly _need _to read, like room service menus?” He picked it up off the bed again and pointed. “Can you tell me what that says?” 

She squinted at the squiggles on the page until they looked like letters, and the letters clumped into words, and the words made sounds in her head that she could push out through her mouth. “Butt—” she snorted so hard she had to start again. “Butt-er-milk pank...pan-cakes.” She jabbed at the menu with her finger. “I’ve had those before, we should get those.”

But Ken didn’t pick up the phone. He just kept looking at her. “Fascinating. So you can read when you don’t need to, but it’s difficult?”

An uneasy sensation trickled down her spine. “You ask too many questions.” The sensation puddled in her gut, but she ignored it, turning her scowl away from Ken and toward the phone on the bedside table. Before he could stop her, she seized the receiver, mashed the first button to catch her eye, and said, “Yeah, we need pancakes over here. Who do we talk to for pancakes?” 

* * *

_ **Now** _

Ken had said that she’d find Blackwing more rewarding this time, but she doesn’t feel rewarded yet. Yeah, the tests don’t hurt this time around, and she doesn’t have to go on killing outings with Mr. Priest. But she does have to put up with being poked and stress-tested and run through simulations. Every day, she refuses to talk to lots of different people with notebooks and clipboards. And she has the creepy-crawly feeling that she’s always, _always _being watched.

Ken’s visits are the only thing keeping her going. Bart keeps suggesting places they could go, things they could do together other than hang around Blackwing like boring coconuts, but Ken puts her off every time. His visits are becoming shorter and more sparse, too; it’s been a week since he last came around, and now he’s trying to leave after only talking to her for a few minutes.

“What are you always running away for?” she asks as he picks up his briefcase. “What’s more important than your best friend?”

Ken’s sigh is weary, but he sets down the briefcase. “I’m sorry, Bart. But as you know, I have a lot of responsibilities right now.”

“Yeah, I’m real impressed, mister big shot director.” 

He does his concerned face, but it doesn’t look right somehow. Something about the set of his mouth. “I wish I could visit more often, and if things go as planned, there will be a lot more for you to do very soon. But for now, I’m asking you to just sit tight. Can you do that for me?” 

“That’s practically allI’ve _been_ doing!” 

“Well, is there anything else that might help you pass the time?” He looks around her cell, which now contains a bed and wall-mounted TV, as well as the table and chairs. “If we brought you some books, would you want to keep working on your reading?”

Hope surges, sudden and sharp. “With you?” 

“Sure, yes.” He smiles. “Sometimes. Other times, someone else might—”

“I’m not talking to nobody else in this place.” 

“—or you could do it on your own.”

She considers. The fact that _this _Ken, Blackwing-Big-Business Ken, is offering her something makes her leery. If he _wants_ her to do it, then there’s something in it for Blackwing. But he _did _say that he might join her sometimes. He’d promised they’d figure things out together. More time together means more chances to convince him. 

_And reading can help you understand things_, whispers a voice in her head. A memory of the _other _Ken. Best-Friend-Ken. 

She wants so desperately to understand.

“Yeah, okay,” she says.

* * *

_ **Then** _

After the Ethiopian food (better than Chinese food, once she finally tried it), Ken insisted on going to a used bookstore before they hit the road again. Bart stayed in the car, feeding the dog scraps of flat, floppy bread and mentally replaying the moment when Ken said he wasn’t going anywhere. Even after thinking about it so much, she was still surprised when he returned, and together they drove to a shady spot along a deserted road. They stopped the car, sprawled in the grass, and Ken tried to make her read out loud from a flimsy book about some scientist guy who couldn’t even work a machine that he built himself. She stumbled through it bit by bit, and sometimes Ken helped her out with the words that were made up just for that particular book, which was annoying—why make reading even worse with fake words? It was frustrating enough just trying to keep her focus on the words she knew, trying to hold them all in her brain at the same time and string them into a story. She didn’t usually bother with stuff where she had to try—whatever she needed to do, she just did. Trying was pointless. _This _was pointless. 

“This is pointless!” She threw the book down on the grass. “This guy is a bozo, he deserves to get eaten along with all of those useless people he found.” 

Ken just smiled at her, which wasn’t what usually happened when she yelled at people. “That’s...one way to look at it,” he said.

“Why would people sit around and read this? Time machines aren’t even a thing.”

“You know, that’s what I thought too, but I’m pretty sure I fixed one in that basement today.” He rummaged in the bag of books. “People read this book—people read all _kinds _of books—because they think it’s interesting. Or fun. Or because reading can help you understand things, like to not drink shampoo, or not to mess around with technology if you don’t want to deal with the consequences. Aha!” He pulled out another book, even skinnier than the first one. “I thought we might need something less complicated. When I was a kid, I used to love the part where he went to the moon.”

Bart took the book from him, looking at the cozy hand-drawn picture on the cover, and then looking back at Ken. “Is this a joke?”

“What? No, it’s—” 

“Because I don’t know about going to the moon or whatever, but I know what bears are, and they _don't_ wear clothes.”

“Right, yeah.” Ken sat up a little straighter. “Let’s talk about anthropomorphic characters.”

She huffed out a laugh, relishing the flex of muscles beneath her ribs. She hadn’t noticed how rarely she laughed until she met Ken, who made her laugh without even trying. “Okay, that one is definitely not a real word.” 

* * *

_ **Now** _

She’d hoped that Ken would bring her the books himself, but it’s almost always strangers who deliver them to her cell. Sometimes they even stay and attempt to watch her, but she stares them down until they leave. She knows there are cameras and it doesn’t really matter if they watch her in-person or not, but she came here for _Ken_—the rest of Blackwing can go choke for all she cares. 

The books they bring, though—she hadn’t known there were so many _kinds_ of books. She always starts out with the ones that have pictures. Some have tons of pictures in little boxes, with words squished into bubbles. Those make her head hurt. Except for the tall book that’s _all_ pictures with no bubbles—she can’t stop looking at that one. The pictures are about a man who’s alone, away from his people, stuck in a place where he can’t talk and can’t read and everything is confusing. By the time she closes the book, her eyes are watering and her nose feels runny, which doesn’t make sense. She never gets sick. 

Some of the books are like Ken’s bear book from before, with friendly pictures and words written real big, like they’re for stupids or something. She’s not stupid, but she looks at the books anyway. There’s a bunch of them, all about a pig and an elephant who are best friends. There are only a few words in each book, so she barely has to try to understand them, and the pictures make her laugh. But then she reads the one where the pig makes a new friend and ignores the elephant, and she doesn’t feel like laughing anymore. She rips the book into ragged shreds and decides that if people eat dead pigs, she wants to kill and eat _that _pig. 

The most recent batch of books are longer and heavier than the others, and she wonders if Ken picked them out just for her, because they’re all about people who kill people. She likes the one about the girl gets letters telling her who to kill, though she has to concentrate real hard to read it, and she quits when the girl starts having too many feelings. A couple of the other books are about guys who are obsessed with killers—like that’s a thing? Why people would be interested in something as basic as killing? It’s just something that _happens, _if it’s meant to happen. One of the book-guys kills other killers, and another of the book-guys tries _not _to kill people, and while she’s done both of those things, she can’t hold her focus on either book. She just keeps losing her place and getting pissed off. 

What do book-guys know about killing people, anyway? They're just murderers, not _assassins_, and these stories are all fake. Ken didn’t bring her any stories about _real _people, people like her. Maybe there aren’t real people like her. Again, she flashes back to Dirk Gently. Had she just made him up, like people made up the stories in these books? Imagined the others she’d heard in the Blackwing from before, just to feel like she wasn’t the only one? She _remembers_ them, though. Remembers _him_, flinching in front of her gun, ignoring her warning that it would all end badly. She tears open her scratchy jumpsuit until she can see the scar on her leg, poke at it until it throbs. The pain is proof that she didn’t make up Dirk’s stabby friend, at least. So maybe Dirk is real, too. Maybe there are others out there...or in here. Ken would know. She’ll ask him, when he comes back. He has to come back _sometime_. 

As if her thoughts conjured him up, she hears Ken’s voice in the hall outside her door. “Not today, I have a meeting with Wilson.” He sounds clipped, dismissive. There’s a mumbling that must be a question from one of the guards, because Ken responds, “Just tell Marzanna I’ll see her soon.”

_Marzanna_. 

She can deflect any blow, but _that _name said by _that _voice hits her square in the chest. It shatters the numbness she’s cocooned herself in for the last few weeks, scraping away skin and cracking through bone until it worms into the pulsing flesh of her heart. It sets her blood roaring in her ears, and suddenly she’s up, scrabbling through the pile of books, searching for the only one she wants Ken to see. 

She’d wanted to find out how their story ended, her and Ken. But now she knows. She knows, without a doubt, that this chapter is over.

She finally finds the book she’s looking for, the words on its cover leaping out at her as bright as clear as the sun she hasn’t seen in weeks. She snatches the book and drops it onto her bed, face-up. She doesn’t even bother re-zipping her jumpsuit before she turns to the door, which slides open easily in front of her. 

Behind her, the pig and elephant on the cover of _I Am Going!_ stare out at the empty room.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Any kudos or comments will be cherished, and feel free to find me on Tumblr to yell about DGHDA and the reading habits of fictional people.  
* * *  
I’m going to hazard a guess that this is the only fic on AO3 that uses Elephant & Piggie books to inject pathos into a story about a murderer. YOU’RE WELCOME.
> 
> If you’re unhappy with how this chapter ends for Bart, I strongly recommend that you check out the next fic in the series!
> 
> Works and authors referenced:  
-_The Time Machine_, H.G. Wells (the book Bart thinks is pointless)  
-_Little Bear_, Else Holmelund Minarik (the book about a bear)  
-_The Arrival_, Shaun Tan (the wordless book that makes Bart cry--it makes me cry too. PLEASE READ SHAUN TAN, Y’ALL.)  
-_Dear Killer_, Katherine Ewell (the murderer girl who has too many feelings for Bart)  
-_Darkly Dreaming Dexter_, Jeff Lindsay (the one about a guy who kills other killers)  
-_I Am Not a Serial Killer_, Dan Wells (the one about a guy who tries NOT to kill people)  
-_My New Friend is So Fun!, I Am Going!_, and other books from the Elephant & Piggie series, Mo Willems


End file.
